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13, 

(^ TO RESTORE THE 

TEN COMMANDMENTS 



THE BASIS OF A PERMANENT 
PEACE FOR EUROPE 




EWlat and Fri,. 



By 



CHARLES A. M^CURDY, M.P. 



HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO 



PRIQB O'EE PENNY 



HOOVEa WAR :ljIBPvARY 

192.3: 



5 TO RESTORE ^ 

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 



■^y::::> 



THE BASIS OF A PERMANENT PEACE FOR EUROPE. 



IiiEAL) tlie other day the report of the doings 
of a Grerman doctor and a Grerman prince. 
Professor Dr. Max Henkel, director of the 
women's clinic at the University of Jena, has been 
the subject of " disciplinary proceedings " in Grerniany, 
whatever that may mean, for performing operations 
in his hospital for which there was no cause. It was 
proved that to amuse a Prince of Lippe a woman 
patient was brought into the operating theatre. She 
had just breakfasted, and as under those conditions 
chloroform would be sure to make her very sick and 
so interfere with the surgeon's work, a stomach-pump 
was applied, and a wholly unnecessary operation was 
then performed to divert the royal visitor. 

The woman died half -ari-hoitr after the operation. 
Evidence was gixeu by assistants that the Professor 
iiad performed Jiiaiiy other operations on liraUJiy 
jircgiiaiit women, some oi' v\liom had died. 

1 



To EESTORE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

Now, this report illustrates one very important 
fact Avliicli we onglit to understand, if we are to find 
a safe and honourable end to this war. 

Grernian civilisation is a civilisation different from 
ours. I do not say that it is better, or worse. It 
is different. Grermauy puts the State first and the 
individual a poor second. The people exist for the 
benefit of the State — to be used as gun-fodder, if 
possible, or in any other way the State may require. 
If the gun-fodder runs short the State takes steps to 
encourage breeding. The State is everything, the life 
of the individual is nothing — a pawn — a plaything 
for princes. In our country Professor Henkel would 
not be subjected to " disciplinary proceedings." He 
would be hanged. 

The Black Heath. 

We regard war as an evil. The Germans regard 
war as a good and wholesome thing, a " biological 
necessity," a " divine institution." The killing of 
civilians^ — even in war — we regard as wrong. The 
Germans regard it as right and they practise it as a 
legitimate thing, and are in fact killing civilians 
on our merchant ships day by day at the present 
time. 

The plagues that devastated Europe in the Middle 
Ages, the Bliick Death that we read of in history, 
left behind them no memories so terrible as the German 

2 



TO RESTORE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

armies will leave in Belgium and Northern France. 
The committee appointed by the British Grovernment 
to report on the Grerman outrages in Belgium — a 
committee which included Lord Bryce, Sir Frederick 
Pollock, and Sir Edward Clarke — reported that 
" murder, lust, and pillage prevailed over many parts 
of Belgiiun on a scale unparalleled in any war between 
civilised nations during the last three centuries. . . . 
There were in many parts of Belgium deliberate and 
systematically organised massacres of the civil 
population. . . . Innocent civilians, both men and 
women, were murdered in large numbers, women 
violated, and children murdered." 

The Devil's Commandments. 

Many people are unable to read the horrible 
details of the committee's report — ^the raping of 
women in public places, the bayoneting and cruci- 
fixion of little children, the murder of the aged, the 
crippled, and the infirm. 

But we ought not to close our eyes to truth, 
however horrible. 

By far the most important fact about the outrages 
committed by the Grerman soldiers in Belgium is not 
that things were done which we regard as cruel 
and wicked, but that the soldiers only carried out, 
for the most part, the orders of the higher military 
command. 

S 



TO RESTORE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

The report of the British comiaittee is very ck^ar 
on this point. They find that 

" The excesses committed in Belsj-ium were too 
wides]3read and too uniform in their character to 
be mere sporadic outbursts of passion. 
The disciphne of the (xerman Army is pro- 
verbially stringent, and its obedience implicit. 
It was to the discipline rather than the want 
of discipline in the German Axmy that these 
outrages, which we are obliged to describe as 
systematic, were due. . . . ' I am merely 
executing orders, and I should be shot if I did 
not execute them,' said a German officer to a 
witness at Lou vain. At Brussels another officer 
said : ' I have not done one-hundredth part of 
what we have been ordered to do by the High 
German Military Authorities.' '* 

Every people has its criminals ; every nation has at 
some time in its history done evil. But the Germans 
stand alone among the civilised nations of to-day as 
a people who have been taught to regard as right 
what other peoples regard as wrong. Other peoples 
are taught from infancy that it is wrong to kilJ you] 
neighbom- and take his house and goods; the German 
people have been taught for the last fifty years thai 
it is not wrong, but natural and right, for the German 
people to kill their neighbours and take their goods 
and territories for the expansion of the Gei-man 
Empire and the glory of the German State. The 
whole people are trained to observe, not the Ten 

4 



TO KESTOIIE THE TEN COM^.IANDMENTS. 

Commandments, but a new set of Commandments — 
the Coram andjnents, not of Grod, hni of the devil : 

TTbou Sbalt Iktll. 

"War is a biological necessity," says (xeneral 
Bernhardi. " I warn you against pity," says 
Nietzsche. 

ITbou Sbalt SteaL 

" Every great people," 'says Professor Wagner, 
" needs new territory : it must expand over 
foreign soil ; it must expel the foreigners by 
the power of the sword." Or as a Grerman 
general. Yon Wrothem, puts it, " A developing 
people like ourselves requires new land for its 
energies, and if peace will not secure it then 
only war remains." 

Ubou Sbalt dovet Ubp IReigbbour's (5oo&fii, 

" We must establish ourselves firmly at 
Antwerp on the North Sea, and at Eiga on the 
Baltic." — Professor Haeckel. 



The GrERMAN Heaven. 

There are war-lovers and jingoes in every country, 
but only in Grermany is a whole people drilled 
and educated from childhood to believe that war is 
a divine institution — that it is the holy duty and 
destiny of the Grerman people to enlarge their 
boundaries by making war upon their neighbom-s. 

No other European nation preaches war as a 
religion and pillage as a means of livelihood. 

St 



TO EESTORE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

I have before me an extract from a Grermari 
weekly paper written for the instruction of ynvith : 
" Lei ns laugh with all our lungs at tlie old 
women in trousers who are afraid of war and 
therefore complain that it is cruel and hideous. 
No ; war is beautiful. . . . Eor us, too, 
the great joyful hour of battle will one day 
strike. . . . Still and deep in the German 
heart must the joy in war and the longing for 
war endure." 

And here is another from the same periodical : 
"When here on earth a battle is woit by 
Grerman arms and the faithful dead ascend to 
Heaven, a Potsdam lance-corporal will call the 
guard to the door, and ' Old Eritz,' springing 
from his golden throne, will give the command 
to present arms. That is the Heaven of young 
Germany."* 

The "Immorality" of Peace. 

That is the way in which it is put to the German 

boys and girls, but those who write for grown-up 

people put it still plainer. The great German 

philosopher Nietzsche says : 

" We children of the future ... do not 
by any means think it desirable that the 
kingdom of righteousness and peace should be 
established on the earth. . . . We rejoice 
in all men who, like ourselves, love danger, war, 
and adventure." 

* From " 501 Gems of G-erman Thouglit," published by 
T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd., to wliicb I am indebted for many Taluable 
references to German writers. 



TO RESTORE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

Bernhardi, tlie Grerman military writer, formerly a 
member of tlie General Staff, says : 

" The efforts directed towards the abolition of 
war must not only be termed foolish, but 
ahsolufelji unmoral, and must be stigmatised as 
iinworiliii of tlie human race. ... Is the 
weak nation to have the same right to live as 
the powerful and vigorous nation ? The whole 
idea represents a presumptuous encroachment on 
the natural laws of development." 

In other words — Germany's weaker neighbours have 
no right to live ; it is immoral to save them 
from being destroyed by the powerful and vigorous 
Germans. 

" Perpetual peace," said Count von Moltke in 
1880, " is a dream, and not a beautiful one at 
that : war forms part of the eternal order 
instituted by God." 

War as a Eeligion. 

The German God is certainly not the God of the 
Christians, as Bernhardi himself recognises : 

" Christian morality is based, indeed, on the law 
of Love. ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
and thy neighbour as thyself.' This law can 
claim no significance for the relations of one 
country with another." — Bernhardi^ s Gerinany 
and the Next War. 

"War," says Professor Burckhardt, "is held 
to be a divine institution. . . . Not for 
nothing do the Indians worship Siva the 
7 



TO 1IEST0.RE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

Desti'oyer ; the warrior is filled with the enthu- 
siasm of destruction ; wars purify the atmosphere 
like thunderstorms. We may here refer to 
H. Leo's phrase as to the ' fresh and joyous war 
that shall sweep away the scrofulous rabble.' " 

By " scrofulous rabble " he means the French, the 
Eussians, ourselves, and any other peoples who stand 
in the way of Grermany's ambitions. 

Bernhardi crosses the fs and dots the i'.s : 

" We must settle our account with France if we 
want a free hand in international policy. 
France must be so completely crushed that she 
can never cross our path again." 

Not that the Grermans are incapable of preachino- 

peace if it suits their purpose. As Nietzsche has said : 

" Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars — 
and the short peace more than the long." 

Cruelty as a Creed. 

The plain unpleasant fact which we have to face 
is the fact that in Grermany we have a State which 
regards war as a national career, which devotes itself 
to preparing for war, and cares no more for the rights 
of other nations than Professor Henkel cared for the 
poor woman whom he butchered for the amusement 
of a Grerman prince. The cruelty and sufferings which 
the war has brought on Europe only add zest to the 
slaughter. 

" Over the blood of the fallen," says Professor 
Kuhn, writing on this war, " glows the flame of 
8 



rO UKSTOllE TIIE l^KN COM MAN DM K NTS. 

poetic enthusiasm. A war without dead and 
wounded is a life without M-ork, without aim, and 
without hope." 

And not only does Germany believe in war, preach 
war, and practise what she preaches ; she regards 
terrorism, outrage, and atrocity as right and proper 
methods of conducting war. 

Nietzsche has explained how the responsibility 
for atrocities disappears— if one person orders them 
and another carries them out. Here is the passage : 

'* Much that is dreadful and inhuman in history 
... is mitigated by the thought that the one 
who commands and the one who executes the 
commands are different persons — the former does 
not see what is done and is therefore not 
unpleasantly affected ; the latter obeys a superior 
and therefore feels no responsibility." 

The Doctrine of Military Necessity. 

This is devil's doctrine — but it finds abundant 
support in Grermany. 

Greneral von Hartmann, writing on "military 

necessity," says : 

" It is a gratuitous illusion to suppose that 
modem war does not demand far more brutality 
than was formerly the case. . . . 
The enemy State must not be spared the want 
and wretchedness of war." 

"We hold," says Nietzsche, "that hardness, 
violence, slavery . . . and devilry of all 
kinds — everything evil, terrible, tyrannical, 
9 



TO EESTOEE THE TEN COMMANDMRNTS. 

wild- beast-like, and serpent-like in man — 
contribute to the elevation of the species." 
" Whenever a national war breaks out," says 
Greneral von Hartmann, "terrorism becomes a 
necessary military principle." 

The doctrine of military necessity is not only a 
doctrine of the Grerman military authorities, it is also 
preached from Glerman pulpits. In a series of 
pamphlets published since the war by professors of 
the University of Berlin is one by Pastor Baumgarten, 
who says : 

" Whoever cannot prevail upon himself to 
approve from the bottom of his heart the sinking 
of the Lusitania, whoever cannot subdue his sense 
of the gigantic cruelty to unnumbered innocent 
victims and give himself up to honest delight 
at this victorious exploit of Grerman defensive 
power — him we judge to be no true Grerman." 

How the honest pastor must have rejoiced when 

he read the story of the Belgian Prince and the 

victorious exploit of the Grerman sailors who stripped 

. defenceless men of their lifebelts and then plunged 

them into an icy sea ! 

The Law of the Jungle. 

Some good people think that our armies in 
Flanders are fighting to win a few miles of blood- 
soaked land ; others look a little farther and think 
tha;fc we are fighting to restore Belgium or to save 

10 



TO EESTORE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

the remnants of the unhappy Serbian people. But 
the issues of this war are not so simple. 

It is not enough to capture Grerman trenches, to 
conquer the Grerman armies and restore Belgium and 
Serbia and other occupied countries ; we have to find 
some security that our work will endure, that Belgium 
once restored will not in a few years' time have to be 
restored again. 

We want to see not only Belgium restored but 
the Ten Commandments restored — the ancient Tables 
of Stone — the Laws of our common humanity, which 
Grermany has shattered in this war. 

So long as official Grermany recognises no laws, 

human or divine, except her own necessities or desires, 

there can be no peaceful life for Europe any more. 

The Grerman view was clearly, put by a German 

philosopher. Max Stirner : 

" What does right matter to me ? I have no 
need of it. What I can acquii-e l)y force that I 
possess and enjoy. ... I have the right to 
do what I have the power to do." 
" Might," says Bernhardi, " is the supreme right, 
and the dispute as to what is right is decided 
by the arbitrament of war. War gives a 
biologically just decision." 

I'his is the Law of the Jungle — the strong may prey 
upon the weak, and no one shall say them Nay ! 

There can be no sort of security for small nations 
or for great, no peace for the world, until this doctrine 
is (1(^ throned. There can be no international law; no 

11 



TO RESTOIIE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

treaties, no honour among nations so long as Germany 
preaches and practises the Law of the Jungle. 

(rood, kind people in this country suggest that we 
should meet the German rulers at a conference, 
negotiate with the Hohenzollerns, and settle matters 
by a treaty. 

But the Law of the Jungle knows no treaties, 
respects no conferences. Von Treitschke has ex- 
pressed the Crerman view of treaties quite honestly 
and quite plainly : 

"No State can pledge its future to another. . , . 
Every sovereign State has the undoubted right 
to declare war at its pleasure, and is consequently 
entitled to repudiate its treaties." 

How could we rely for safety upon a treaty 
made with a State which does not hesitate, and has 
never hesitated, to act upon that doctrine ? 

" A pacific agreement with England is a thing 
which no serious statesman would trouble to 
follow," says General von Bernhardi in 
" Germany and the Next War." 

To Eestore the Ten Commandments. 

The men who have preached war and planned 
war for forty years are still in power in Germany; 
they are still believers in their abominable creed, and 
they are still most actively engaged in putting it into 
practice. 

12 



TO KESTUilE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

If we stopped figliting now we should have to 
prepare, with all the energy of which we are capable, 
to defend oarselves against the next attack ; and no 
one can say under what conditions the next attack 
would be made. To-day nearly the wlioie world is 
on our side. The next war we niitjht have to fig'ht 
alone. 

We cannot safely lay down our arms and dissolve 
the grand alliance of free nations, though Germany 
should offer to make any treaty of peace that could be 
suggested, until Grermany is disarmed. 

(iermany is too great and powerful for the safety 
of her neighbours so long as she has the will and the 
means to use her greatness and her power for their 
destruction. We must disarm Grermany, substitute 
Right for Might in the settlement of any questions 
that may arise between Grermany and her smaller 
neighbours, bury the Law of the Jungle, and restore 
the Ten Commandments as rules of civilised life for 
Europe. 

A League of Peace, 

It is a hard and difficult task, but it can be done. 
It must be done if Christianity and civilisation are to 
survive this war. 

We must not only defeat Grermany : we must 
discredit and abolish war. We must not only disarm 
Germany : we must tind a basis for Peace that will 
enable us to disarm ourselves. 

13 



TO LiESTORE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

President Wilson has already pointed out a way 
— the formation of a League of Nations pledged to 
submit to a court of justice their own differences and 
disputes ; ready to receive on equal terms all nations 
willing to join them in the task of preventing wars ; 
resolved by every means in their poWer to secure and 
maintain peace among the nations and goodwill 
among all the peoples of the earth. 

The materials for such a league are ready to hand; 
If all the nations now allied against Grermany under- 
take here and now the formation of a world-wide 
partnership bound together in a League of Peace, 
thoup-h this war will still have to be finished, we can 
make the world safe, so far as is humanly possible, 
against any more wars in our lifetime or the lifetime 
of our children's children. 

We can fashion for Justice a weapon mightier 
than the sword, more terrible than artillery — the 
weapon of world boycott against any future disturbers 
of the world's peace. 

We can close to war-makers the harbours of 
every sea, the markets of every continent in the 
world. The conquest of Serbia, the annexation of 
Belgium, of Erench or German provinces would be 
dearly bought by Grermany at the price of exclusion 
from the great continents beyond the seas. 

No commercial nation could afford to maintain 

greskt axmieg and navies at the cost of exclusion from 

the markets of America, Asia, and Africa. No 

14 



TO EESTOEE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

belligerent nation could hope to recover from the 
economic waste and ruin of this war if it was unable 
to find seaports open to its traders or to obtain the 
raw materials essential for its industries. 

Until the Day Dawns. 

It is no mean or selfish aim that the Allies are 
pursuing in this war. We are not seeking to annex 
Grernian territory, to despoil the Grerman people, or 
to exact vengeance for Grerman crimes. We are 
seeking to abolish the causes which led to this war, 
which have led to so many wars in the past, in order 
that the future generations of English, French, 
Grermans, and all the other peoples of the world may 
never know the horrors of war again. 

It is a great purpose not soon or easily to be 
performed. 

But terrible as has been the price we have 
already paid in human lives and suffering, we cannot 
falter on the only path that promises deliverance. 

If from any weariness of soul, or infirmity of 
spirit, or in any hour of doubt, we were to abandon 
our task, we might for ourselves gain an easy peace ; 
but we should be leaving to our children a heritage 
of wars more cruel, of burdens yet more difficult to bear. 

We shall not so greatly betray the future of our race. 

Until the day dawns — however long the night — 



we si 1 all fight on. 



U 



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